As part of a collaboration with Art21, hear news-making artists describe their inspirations in their own words.

Tanya Aguiñiga was born and raised in Tijuana, and traveled everyday to San Diego to attend school. Growing up straddling the border and its disparate cultures, the artist was constantly in flux, a binational citizen who literally migrated between two worlds on a daily basis. Becoming an artist wasn’t something that felt attainable, she says in an exclusive video filmed as part of Art21’s Extended Play series. “There’s not a lot of art that seems accessible to working-class people,” Aguiñiga says. “Why does it have to be such a narrow view of what humanity actually is, and what humanity is actually experiencing?” Read the full article here.

Extraordinary Ordinary Objects: A Review of Jonathan Muecke at Volume Gallery

An enormous rock with holes, a solid wood block, a carbon tube bench, a textile box, a flat shape. Jonathan Muecke’s objects sound common or familiar, but don’t let that fool you—they are all quite extraordinary. Forcing the viewer to think outside of the box is Muecke’s biggest triumph. His elegant array of new objects, on view at Volume Gallery, makes for an interesting series where nothing is as it seems. Form, scale and material come together in unexpected combinations that remain open to interpretation. Furniture design meets sculpture, traditional meets hi-tech, and functionality meets the absurd. Read the full review here.

An intellectual venture into function and form, yielding forms that are surprisingly tactile and visceral.

A GRADUATE OF the famed Cranbrook Academy of Art, Minnesota-based polymath Jonathan Muecke has dedicated his illustrious career to bending the boundaries of art, architecture and design. Like many of his contemporaries, Muecke’s cumulative oeuvre occupies an experimental and conceptual realm that questions the parameters of function and form. In his quest, the trained architect challenges cultural and social norms – while also skewing proportion and subverting historical symbols. His – what are ostensibly, sculptures – borrow references from furniture, material culture, everyday objects and architectonic elements. Ultimately, his refined forms exist to define negative and positive space and don’t claim any specific purposes. These liminal objects remain pure as instigations and studies. Represented by Chicago-based Volume Gallery and Brussels-based Maniera, he aligns with both platforms’ distinctive architectural programmes, that is architect-led furniture and object design. This focus often results in a more intellectual approach, one that employs the design medium to make larger statements about culture and society. It allows these practitioners the space and time to test out ideas they might not have within the constructed environment. Muecke takes full advantage of this approach and format. Read the full review here.

Volume Gallery in Chicago wants nothing more than to cultivate new American design talent

It’s been more than a decade since Volume Gallery arrived on the collectible design scene, and in that time, the small Chicago-based platform has consistently punched above its weight. Chalk it up to pluck and sheer good taste: Volume has cultivated a roster of smart, experimental, critique-oriented talents that distinguishes it from the rest of the pack. Sam Stewart, Thaddeus Wolf, and Anders Herwald Ruhwald were all given a big push by the gallery. And it’s not just designers. Unique for collectible design, Volume invests in architects foraying into the realm of object making, working closely with practices including Norman Kelly and Young & Ayata. This mandate harks back to the discipline’s origins—in addition to buildings, architects once masterminded furniture and interiors—and aligns well with Chicago’s own design tradition. Volume’s reach isn’t limited to the Windy City, however, and the gallery routinely engages emerging practitioners from all over the United States. In many respects, it is more akin, according to cofounder Claire Warner, to an “incubator” for formal risk-taking, as can be seen in its most recent spate of exhibitions. Warner and cofounder Sam Vinz commissioned new collections from Christy Matson, Ania Jaworska, and most recently Jonathan Muecke, encouraging each to hone his or her ideas in order to spark critical discourse. AN Interior market editor Adrian Madlener spoke to Warner about the gallery’s mission and why making a functional chair is beside the point. Read the full interview here.